Response to comment on "a test of the snowball theory for the rate of evolution of hybrid incompatibilities"

Abstract

Barbash claims that deficiency mapping of inviability regions cannot distinguish hybrid lethality from haploinsufficiency, the phenomenon whereby a single functional copy of a gene cannot maintain normal function in a hybrid genetic background. Although we acknowledge that his hypothesis deserves careful experimental testing, we argue against his conclusions and provide evidence that our methodology is suitable to study the evolution of Dobzhansky-Muller incompatibilities.